DragonOfTheSeas

Thank you all for reading my thread. I find I pay more attention to the cruise when I am telling others about it. Here are a couple of final comments: I was very worried about the number of children that would be on this cruise. Someone on the FB thread said the number was 1600. I can't confirm that--but I would believe it. . . . and there were some children that were running amok. However, the vast majority of them were just being children. They were occasionally taking too loud, walking/running too fast and moving in packs. I must admit I spent all of my pool time in the solarium and had a Hideaway Beach pass on Coco Cay. [good strategy on my part HaHaHa] However, I have seen a lot worse behavior with less children. [and from adults] Some of the credit goes to RCL for all of the activities they had planned for the children. Food-- We felt the food was pretty good. Breakfast was excellent each day. We enjoyed the brunch on sea day. However, I felt it needed to stay open until at least 1 or 1:30 to be a true brunch. We enjoyed the stir fry station in the WJ. [so good] My DD enjoyed the chicken dishes. I enjoyed the lamb and the beef tenderloin. I do not feel it is a good idea to select steak. They seem tough and we avoid them. DD gives me grief about all of the soups I eat. I feel the cabin arrangement with the JS and the solo cabin worked out well for us and we would do this again on a ship that has this. We did not go to very many of the entertainment options so I can't really comment on those. However, DD did and enjoyed them. I really liked "We Will Rock You." I already gave my opinion of Spectra. Disembark was as smooth as we have ever had. We reported to Jaimie's for the assisted disembark at 8 am. They took us right away. We left the ship, took a taxi and got to the train station by 9am. I paid a fee to change our Amtrak tickets from 12:22pm to 9:23am and we were off. 🚆 It turned out to be a big plus. There was no waiting around and the later train ended up being late. I hope everyone made it home safely and you enjoy your next cruise!

We just got off the Anthem today. We had an employee anytime it was open.

They met us at breakfast this morning with complementary mimosas. Now that’s the way to end cruise.

We are back! Currently 6:05 am. So no worries about us arriving late. Wr kept her in good shape for the next cruise. Have a good time.

During dinner tonight, one of the crew-members dressed up and walked through the various dining rooms, entertaining the kids while they were waiting in line and at the tables. it appeared when he was walking that the alien was carrying him, and then he had a baby doll in his arms that moved its arms and head. It was really something. Ha ha ha. As if the “my time dining” lines weren’t crazy enough already.😜 he was happy for me to take his picture

If I hear that, it’s going to affect us in anyway even if it’s tomorrow morning, I will post so you’ll know. Have a great cruise.

I agree with you. The two MTD lines were huge and slow. We were so glad that we had been given the trial 6:30pm fixed seating.

Speaking of Norfolk. We are headed back to Norfolk to meet a helicopter from the Naval Air Station. During our “we will rock you” performance we heard an alpha, alpha alpha. Just a few minutes ago the captain came on and told us that we were going to meet helicopter because of medical emergency. This is our current location.

I’m sorry this post was supposed to be in another thread. For people who were coming to Norfolk. I didn’t notice I was in the wrong thread soon enough to delete it.

There is very little time between courses.

There are only two cruises in April. They leave on the fourth and 12 April. And then the vision goes to drydock until May. It’s too early at this point to decide what to do with those cruises. Officials keep saying it’s only going to take a few weeks not months. But I don’t think anyone knows that until they actually get in there and start seeing the particulars.

I am currently on the anthem. And we were randomly assigned to the 630 fixed seating. We love it. And would sign up for this all the time. I imagine a lot of people would. There are only nine waiters who are currently doing that on this ship. And it’s a pretty big ship. I think it’s a real struggle for the waiter. there have been several nights that the previous people were not finished by 6:30 or they finished up right at 6:30 and it took the headwaiter and all the waiting staff to frantically bus tables that were assigned to the 6:30 session. They added a bunch of chairs into an anti-room for us to sit and wait until the table is ready. That works if you have a few tables but it’s not gonna work if you have the whole dining room. I think they’re still working on the specifics.

The ship is holding an Easter egg hunt in the kids club this morning. No telling how they’re going to do that with all these children. But as I passed through the indoor family pool, I noticed that there were a lot less people.🥚🐰🧺

I posted this a couple hours ago in the wrong thread. If this is a duplicate, I apologize. I thought I would move it here. I can answer many questions if you have them. Our DS lives in Virginia Beach and used to live in Norfolk near Old Dominion University.

I’m in my happy place, the solarium. It took me a while to find a seat. They are not near each other —but that is no issue. We are like vultures looking for prey. The staff is putting notes on seats with just towels and removing them after a half an hour. But there’s certainly more people who want seats than there are seats in the solarium today.

Here are a few more random shots from around the ship these are from Two70 and this was the end of a program called the house of mouse. We got there just as it ended, and they were deciding which team won. Note the three team captain standing in the front. The team on the left captain looked to be about 12. And that team won. The interesting thing was that, the prizes were beer cuzzies. Haha that would normally be a perfectly good prize, but you had to know that if the game was called the house of the mouse, that it was going to be a child filled audience The bionic bar The royal Esplanade

Norfolk is a Navy town. They rally around when anything goes wrong. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the area around the dock. It is known as waterside, and it is a very popular section of the city. If you are able, go down a day early to enjoy, the scenery and the restaurants. Check out Nauticus on the Internet and see if you would enjoy visiting that. It’s just beside the cruise ship terminal. There’s also a small park right on the waterfront and they often have events there. You might want to check the schedule for the city. if it was me, I would stay at either the Hilton or the Marriott. Each of them is only a block or two from the port. If you drive down and have transportation, you might want to go to Virginia Beach for the afternoon before. It’s a very family friendly beach. Very modern and clean. There is a boardwalk and there are hotels adjacent to the boardwalk but It is less commercial than Ocean City, for example.

Here is today’s sunrise picture. Look at that beautiful flat ocean. You can’t ask for better weather on the last day of a cruise. High today is supposed to be 70 but of course it’ll feel a lot cooler than that with the wind.

Thank you we would need to do that when DD sails with us again. We usually cruise in the spring and the fall. Sometimes doing.B2Bs. we will have to see when we can make that work with her teaching schedule. The Doubletree near the Penn station is not that great of a hotel but it’s very convenient and with DH mobility issues easiest is good.

We were usually done by about 7:45. Our waiter was very fast. If we ordered two appetizers, he always put them on the table at the same time. I’m not sure if that’s the new procedure or if I was just what he was doing too. Make sure dinner moved along quickly. yes, that time works really well for us too

Thank you I hadn’t looked into it yet.

It took us about a half an hour from the Doubletree last October. We took an Uber from the hotel. I think the next time we leave from Bayonne we will go back to the Doubletree. The reason that we selected the Jersey City hotel this time was that we are Hilton HHonors members and so we like to stay at the Hilton Brand. And they had two room suites, and the Doubletree at the Penn station doesn’t have a suite like that. Our daughter was with us and we wanted to give her and us some privacy. edit: I reread my post. I’m not sure that you were asking me about the Doubletree at the Penn Station that we stayed in last time or the Doubletree that we stayed in Jersey City. So I’ll leave the above comment and add that it took us about 30 minutes from Jersey City as well. that was just to get to the port once we got to the port of course we were in all that traffic, so it took us more than an hour in total, but this wasn’t unusual situation with the anthem arriving late.

I wanted to write a post about the main dining room for dinner. As I mentioned earlier, we originally signed up for my time dining with a reservation at 7 o’clock each night. So Royal Caribbean selected us to be part of their experiment for a 630 fixed dining time. that has turned out to be quite the blessing. First of all our waiter and assistant waiter are excellent and we’ve had a great experience all week. Secondly, the lines to get into the dining room are simply outrageous every night. It’s such a crowd in front of the dining room, that we go in a side door to get to our table each night. This is a picture outside of the main dining room. the right hand side of the hall are people without Reservations the left-hand side are people with Reservations I don’t see that the people who made reservations are in any better shape than the people who didn’t. I would be really annoyed to have made reservations and have to wait in line like this every night to get seated. i’m not sure the 6:30pm fixing, will work on a large scale. Several evenings the early seating guests were still at the table at 6:30. The dining staff set up a series of chairs in a small ant room, near that side entrance, and we and other guests at 6:30 whose table was not yet empty would sit there until they were ready. It was never more than five or 10 minutes. So it was not a problem for us. but it was a stressful situation for the waiters who were really frantic to bus and reset the table. The headwaiter has been very attentive and helpful. I’m sure he’s also trying to facilitate this trial. Our waiter told us that there were only nine waiters that are part of this 6:30 seating as a trial. And this is the second cruise that he has done that.

Yes, they do, but there was a giant line and it was faster for us to park first and then take our luggage with us.